For some reason, Larian decided to ditch the old system from the early access and use an "I go, you go" staggered initiative system instead.
This means that even if your entire team has a better initiative score than the enemy, only one of your characters gets to act before them.
This basically turns initiative (and in extension, wits) into a stat that's only good for deciding which of your own characters gets to open the fight. Regardless of whether all of your guys have an initiative of 20 and the enemies have 0, the enemies always go second, fourth, sixth, while your guys go first, third, fifth.
That's awful, because it basically means that you should only increase wits ever in one party member.
The other effects of wits, spotting hidden objects and the miniscule boost to critical chance, don't make up for this.
It has to be fixed somehow. Either Wits need to be revised so it does something new, or the old initiative system needs to be brought back (possibly with a bonus to enemies' wits stats, so they don't always go last).